Online networking has grown dramatically in popularity in recent years. Online networking websites allow entities such as an individual user or a business to display information relating to the entity and to interact with others who may have like interests. A user, for example, will register or open an account at an online networking site and will define a profile. The user will then add personal data and perhaps media such as photographs or video clips to the profile in order to present a view of information about the user to others, who may then interact with the user in various ways, for example by exchanging comments or email.
In order to attract a sufficient number of users to make the site attractive to others, the site must provide a variety of features and functionality to make the display and exchange of information interesting and useful, and yet the site must be simple and easy to use. Online networking sites invariably provide for a single profile per account and a single view of the profile. If a user wants to present more than one view of the user's information, the user must open multiple accounts.
However, users often have a variety of areas of interest and relationships of different types and degrees of intimacy. For example, a user often has set of close family relationships, a number of social friends and acquaintances, a group of contacts with whom the user may want to interact in connection with a hobby or special area of interest, and business relationships with customers, fellow employees and others. Similarly, a company or business entity may have different types of relationships and areas of interest. The term entity is used broadly herein to refer to an entity of any kind including without limitation an individual user and a fictitious person such as a corporation, partnership or sole proprietorship. All entities with whom a user or other entity may have a relationship are referred to broadly herein as friends. Opening a separate account and maintaining a separate profile for each area of interest and set or subset of friends is difficult and time consuming, and many users and other entities simply don't take the time or make the effort to do so, thereby losing the potential benefits of online networking in each of these areas.